It's a day President Ronald Reagan made a national holiday more than 30 years ago to commemorate slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But for some, including Rev. Charles Elliott, the day and the name are personal. Elliott, 80, is known to many as the face of King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, where he has pastored for more than 50 years.

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He also appears in the history books, alongside the man he simply called "ML."

But Elliott's own battle for civil rights began years before he met Dr. King.

"We wasn't allowed to sit on the front seat," he said of the buses that ran through Wheeler, Alabama, where he had been raised.

At a young age, he set out to change that, but there was only frustration and disappointment along the way. He was blasted with water hoses and bitten by police dogs. His parents begged him to stop, fearing he would be killed.

"I had to keep fighting and fighting and fighting until the change did come. Because we were living a miserable life; it was miserable," he remembered of his decision to become and stay involved with civil rights.

By 1959, Elliott was in Birmingham, Alabama, leading marches. It was then the decision was made to bring a virtual unknown to the Deep South. His name was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Elliott admits it was the "Dr." part that initially got the attention of organizers.

Later on he says, it was his speeches, "There was something about him that just drawed me. I just couldn't get enough of him."

The pair marched side by side for nearly a decade, with Elliott remembering, "Every time he would call me, I would go."

So, when King called from Memphis in April 1968, asking him to march to raise wages for sanitation workers, Elliott went. By then living in Louisville, he returned home Wednesday night. King was assassinated Thursday.

"It just shook me, it shook me. That was one of the hardest things that ever happened to me in my life. Still is," he said.

King had spoken of, and long promised, equality -- five decades later, Elliott says King's dream has been realized.

"I didn't believe it would ever happen. King did but I didn't," he said of equal rights, adding of his friend, "Because he had a vision."

Not only was Rev. Elliott instrumental in the early marches in Birmingham, he was on hand in 1962 when the first black student enrolled at the University of Mississippi. He was also the first to bring Dr. King to Louisville.